[LMB] Favorite Vorkosiverse planets

[D. Reed]

--- On Sun, 5/31/09, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> 
> > It's also important to remember that Barrayar contains
> the vast
> > majority of the Imperium's population. Sergyar barely
> has a million
> > people, just a fraction of a district. Even Komarr's
> whole population
> > (urbanized, no real suburbs or rural areas) is
> probably comparable to
> > that of a single large industrialized Barrayaran
> district.
> 
> IIRC Barrayar has about 60 million people.  Wikipedia
> estimates 60-120
> million.  (60 Districtions, *some* of which have
> millions of people.)  I
> don't know of any estimate of Komarr's population but if
> those domes are
> large cities it could easily be a good fraction of
> Barrayar's, if not
> comparable.

Yes, that's a random wikipedia estimate and it's nonsense. If Aral's district (war-torn, mountainous, poor, and with a giant area still glowing green) has several million people as of Mirror Dance, somewhere like Vordarian's rich coastal district or Vorbarr Sultana will have many, many more. Tibet's only got a couple million, that doesn't mean China's only got 60 million. Doubling in population in forty years is also completely reasonable for a planet with a sudden technological upshift to do. Earth has done it a couple of times with trillions of people, not tens or hundreds of millions. By Diplomatic Immunity, Barrayar has to have at least a couple hundred million people.

60 million is less than the current population of the UK. Barrayar can support far far more.

Contraceptives and uterine replicators only help women have the exact number of children they want. For Barrayar, that seems to be four. All of the only children we see are only children because something went terribly wrong, not because their parents only wanted one. Harra, Nikki, Miles, Ivan, Elena, Gregor, even Serg... meanwhile, 'normal' families like the Koudelkas and the Vorvaynes are having at least four. Lem's got seven siblings in the back-country, while even Professora Vorthys manages three and a career.